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			<h1>Artificial value</h1>
			<p>Written in <span title="Ethics and Social Responsibility">PHIL 1404</span> of <a href="http://www.uopeople.edu/">University of the People</a>, finalized on 2017-03-01</p>
		</header>
<p>
	The value people put in name-brand goods is purely artificial.
	A handbag made by a well-respected company isn&apos;t somehow actually more valuable than an identical handbag from Finer Bags.
	I feel that such artificial value placement is harmful, and Finer Bags is helping provide an alternative.
	People who buy these bags get the same quality and same people-think-I&apos;m-rich effect that splurging on an over-priced bag would get them.
	Companies that sell impostors - that is, products actually pretending to the buyers to be the originals - are unethical.
	However, companies that sell their products and admitting these products to be an imitation to their buyers are providing a valuable product (and arguably a valuable service) to their customers.
</p>
<p>
	It&apos;s worth noting that there are at least three types of artificial value.
	The first is the type that we put in currency.
	Money isn&apos;t actually good for anything; it only has value because we say it does.
	This kind of artificial value is very useful, as it keeps us from having to keep a ton of different types of goods on hand to trade with others for what we need.
	It makes negotiating employment easier, too.
	Are you working for oranges?
	Or raw iron?
	Nope, you&apos;re working for cold, hard, versatile cash.
	The second type of artificial value is that which people put in brand names.
	They think that if something is made by a particular company, it is magically more valuable than equal-quality products from other companies.
	To be clear, I&apos;m not saying that cheaply-made knock-offs are as valuable as the original; I&apos;m saying that duplicates made with to the same level of quality as the original product carry the same real value as the original product, but people place less artificial value in them.
	This kind of artificial value is harmful.
	It builds virtual monopolies through a virtual lack of alternatives, allowing real price gouging.
	The third type of artificial value is sentimental value.
	Due to how fragmented this value is (what I find sentimental value in is vastly different than what you or anyone else finds sentimental value in), it&apos;s difficult to argue this type of value as positive or negative.
</p>
<p>
	Finer Bags admits that they&apos;re not the original company selling these designer handbags (Brusseau, n.d.).
	There&apos;s no deception in what they&apos;re doing, at least not directly.
	Calling these bags &quot;counterfeit&quot; is quite a stretch.
	Counterfeit money only functions because those that spend it don&apos;t tell the receiving party that it wasn&apos;t actually issued by the government.
	On the other hand, these hand bags are real hand bags, and the company actually admits to customers that the original designers didn&apos;t manufacture them.
	Except for in the case of customers of deceitful resellers, these bags have have value to their owners even without any thought by their owners that they are anything that they&apos;re not.
</p>
<h2>Honesty at Finer Bags</h2>
<p>
	I don&apos;t think that anyone is arguing that Finer Bags wasn&apos;t on the up-and-up as far as direct honesty goes.
	That is to say, Finer Bags openly admitted that their products weren&apos;t those actually produced by name brands.
	Honesty was clearly a part of Finer Bags&apos; corporate culture.
	However, was dishonesty <strong>*also*</strong> a part of their corporate culture?
	I&apos;d argue yes.
	Some might say that producing imitation designer bags, Finer Bags was profiting from encouraging their customers to be dishonest.
	These customers, arguably, were putting on an air of wealthiness that they couldn&apos;t honestly back with actual money.
	I find this argument flimsy at best, but there was something that fell less into a grey area going on at Finer Bags too.
	Finer Bags no longer seems to be in business, but as seen on an archived version of their website (Finerbags.com, 2008), Finer Bags actively encouraged resellers.
	It&apos;s highly probable that most resellers weren&apos;t honest about the source of their products.
	After all, if they were honest, customers could go directly to Finer Bags, cutting out the middleman and avoiding the resellers&apos; markup.
	Finer Bags had two sets of clientèle; one that they catered to under an arguably honestly pretense, and the other that they served knowing full well that by serving them, they were helping to deceive the end buyers.
</p>
<h2>Dissonance</h2>
<p>
	Cultural dissonance occurs when actions of the company don&apos;t match the values the company supposedly holds (Brusseau, n.d.).
	It&apos;s highly probable that dissonance was felt by employees at Finer Bags.
	Even though they practiced honesty themselves, encouraging others (such as resellers) to engage in dishonesty feels ... dishonest, even if it technically isn&apos;t.
	If honesty was an important value for Finer Bags (and in might not&apos;ve been), it should&apos;ve been actively promoted by the company.
	That is to say, Finer Bags should&apos;ve encouraged their customers to be honest too, not cater to dishonest resellers.
</p>
<p>
	That said, it&apos;s also possible that no dissonance was felt.
	A breakdown in ethical compliance occurs when employees don&apos;t follow the ethical code of conduct (Brusseau, n.d.).
	Helping your customers be dishonest to <strong>*their*</strong> customers while not practicing dishonesty yourself isn&apos;t technically a breakdown of compliance with a code that requires honesty to your customers.
	Without a breakdown of compliance, do we even have any evidence of dissonance?
	Employees might have felt they were empowering their customers, even the dishonest ones, through their own honesty.
	I see the same type of thought process from free software enthusiasts that use permissive (as opposed to copyleft) licenses.
	As long as they themselves are honest, they&apos;ve done the right thing by the company.
</p>
<p>
	All of this assumes that Finer Bags had a culture of honesty though.
	We don&apos;t work for the now-defunct Finer Bags, so we don&apos;t know what their codes of conduct were or how good compliance was.
</p>
<h2>Justifying the Finer Bags business with utilitarianism</h2>
<p>
	From a utilitarian standpoint, Finer Bags did a lot more good than harm.
	Customers that bought directly from Finer Bags knew exactly what to expect, saved tonnes of money, and received high-quality products.
	Resellers did quite well too, selling Finer Bags merchandise with steep markup.
	Even the victims of reseller fraud weren&apos;t any worse off.
	They received high-quality products that they perceived as having been made by the brands they love.
	The only ones who were worse off because of the Finer Bags business model were the former monopoly-holders that had produced the original bags.
	Even they weren&apos;t harmed too much though.
	They were still able to make a killing, and the percentage of customers lost was likely minimal.
	Many customers of Finer Bags likely couldn&apos;t even afford the bags made by the original companies, so while the original companies did lose some customers (especially to Finer Bags product resellers), not all of Finer Bags&apos; customers would have supported the original companies had Finer Bags not been in business.
</p>
<h2>Condemning the Finer Bags business with duty-based ethics</h2>
<p>
	Duty-based ethics are based on actions instead of consequences.
	I find it very difficult to find a duty that I can actually support that Finer Bags went against that was vital to their business.
	I strongly support copying, monopoly-busting, and derivative works.
	I strongly oppose copyright law and &quot;ownership&quot; of designs.
	The only thing I think Finer Bags did wrong was to encourage resellers that were likely dishonest, but the problem with that lies in the consequences, not any particular duty.
	However, two noble duties do seem to condemn the Finer Bags business model.
	The first is the duty to follow the law.
	Finer Bags seems to have been shut down because of legal action.
	Their domain was even revoked and transfered to one of the companies that they imitated merchandise of.
	I can only assume that Finer Bags was breaking some law in order to keep their business alive.
	I don&apos;t believe that the designs themselves were likely protected by something like copyright law, but Finer Bags likely included the original designers&apos; names on the merchandise they sold; they had to, or it wouldn&apos;t look &quot;genuine&quot;.
	This is a violation of trademark law.
	That also brings us to the second duty they likely didn&apos;t uphold: the duty not to impersonate others.
	&quot;Intellectual property&quot; law comes in at least four flavors: copyright law, patent law, trade secret law, and trademark law.
	Of these, the first three exist to create monopolies and harm customers.
	In other words, these sets of laws are unjust.
	However, trademark law isn&apos;t like the other three.
	Trademark law exists to preserve reputations and allow customers to know who they are doing business with.
	Trademark law does get abused sometimes (Do you know that the generic smiley face is trademarked and no one is allowed to use it without paying royalties?), but in general, trademark law exists to protect both companies and consumers.
	Creating nearly-identical bags, but using the Finer Bags logo instead of the logo of the original companies would have been one thing.
	However, Finer Bags violated the duty not to pretend to be who they aren&apos;t when they made these indistinguishable lookalikes.
	If they couldn&apos;t pull in customers using their own name instead of the names of others, perhaps they should&apos;ve closed their doors and stopped doing business.
</p>
<h2>Conclusions</h2>
<p>
	I don&apos;t think that everything Finer Bags did was right, but I don&apos;t think it was all wrong, either.
	They operated in a grey area.
	On one hand, they provided a service that was desperately needed: an alternative producer, competition, and the breaking of monopolies.
	On the other hand, because the value placed in the goods they replicated was artificial and based on the names of the producers of the goods, breaking those monopolies and providing and alternative, less expensive products required impersonating other companies.
	In other words, even though Finer Bags was being completely honest, they were also being very dishonest in a way.
	There&apos;s no escaping that fact.
</p>
<div class="APA_references">
	<h2>References:</h2>
	<p>
		Brusseau, J. (n.d.). Case Studies. Retrieved from <a href="http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/business-ethics/s13-06-case-studies.html"><code>http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/business-ethics/s13-06-case-studies.html</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Brusseau, J. (n.d.). The Relation between Organizational Culture and Knowing the Right Thing to Do. Retrieved from <a href="http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/business-ethics/s13-02-the-relation-between-organizat.html"><code>http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/business-ethics/s13-02-the-relation-between-organizat.html</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Brusseau, J. (n.d.). What Is Corporate Culture? Retrieved from <a href="http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/business-ethics/s13-01-what-is-corporate-culture.html"><code>http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/business-ethics/s13-01-what-is-corporate-culture.html</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Finerbags.com. (2008). Replica Handbags, Wholesale Fake Wallets, Designer Louis Vuitton Bags. Retrieved from <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100305183358/https://finerbags.com/"><code>https://web.archive.org/web/20100305183358/https://finerbags.com/</code></a>
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